


Rooftop Mementos

by ExcavatingLizard



Series: Moments out of time [1]
Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1980s, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Jim is a Little Shit, Jim kirk is a nerd, One Shot, One-Sided Attraction, The Left Hand of Darkness - Freeform, Unrequited Crush, jim is still a bartender, writing prompts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-15
Updated: 2021-02-15
Packaged: 2021-03-17 01:07:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,414
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29463249
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ExcavatingLizard/pseuds/ExcavatingLizard
Summary: Jim always went to the roof when he wanted to be aloneOr: Jim and Bones are roommates in the 80s, and sometimes Jim just needs a break. This is one such occasion.
Relationships: James T. Kirk & Leonard "Bones" McCoy
Series: Moments out of time [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2169735
Comments: 2
Kudos: 5





	Rooftop Mementos

**Author's Note:**

> I originally wrote this as a warm-up based on a couple prompts from [here](https://colormayfade.tumblr.com/generator) but it sort of just devolved into something else. I haven't written in quite a while, so hopefully this all makes sense.
> 
> Prompts were: 1980s, secret hideaway.
> 
> I didn't really push the 80s element too hard, but I tried to keep some of the opinions of the time in mind as I wrote. This is basically just a little look at a slice of their daily life.

Jim always went to the roof when he wanted to be alone.

His housemates were constantly moving, always busy with some class or other. There was barely a time when their apartment building wasn’t filled with slamming doors or laughing voices. That was the problem with shared accommodation, he supposed. It was, well, shared.

Usually though, even with housemates, you at least had your own room; you could still get away from other people, have some space to yourself without having to worry about someone else busting in.

Unfortunately for Jim, his bartending job didn’t exactly pay all that well, and it wasn’t like he had someone to fill his bank account for him. No, his mom couldn’t be bothered. She’d barely been around when he was a kid anyway, always on some stint with another navy boat. That was just one of the problems of having an army mom, even if she was just a mechanic. Most students still had a backup plan: if worst came to worst, they could just go home and sulk in their parent’s basement. Jim had always had to look out for himself.

The fact remained that he had to share a room with the only other person in their building not actively in college. Bones had finished his medical degree and arrived in the house fresh from a divorce. Bones wasn’t a  _ bad _ roommate per se, but he was the living personification of ‘curmudgeon’, and he grumbled about anything and everything. It was usually tempered by his  _ natural southern charm _ , but most of their housemates tried to stay out of his way. Jim was the only one not scared shitless by his roommate’s glares, and also the only one who might conceivably be called Bones’ friend. Even if he didn’t mind his roommate, Jim missed having his own space.

Jim had quickly figured out that, not only was the roof perfectly safe and, well,  _ mostly _ accessible, but no one else seemed to go up there. Sure, the fact that you had to climb out a fourth-story window and drag yourself up the overhanging lip of the roof might have something to do with it, but still. Jim had bought a cheap plastic lawn chair which he threw up to the roof— hoping like hell that it wouldn’t fall to the pavement below— and with a few pillows, the top of the building was soon the perfect haven for him to get away from Bones and the others.

To get away from everything, actually.

When he wasn’t on the roof, Jim weighted the chair and handful of pillows with rocks so they wouldn’t blow away, but other than that it was a place where he didn’t have to worry about anything. None of his responsibilities could follow him up there. No broken expectations, no broken hearts, no broken promises; those were all part of the world below.

Up there, so much higher than his usual view of the grimy streets, Jim was free. The sight of the city spread out around him, high-rise buildings obscuring the view to the east and the lake stretching away into the distance was somehow calming. Being able to look down at all the hustle and bustle of a thriving metropolis, and being separate from it all? There was nothing else like it.

In some ways, it helped him to compartmentalize his life: there was the part of Jim who worked the bar, smiled at customers and ignored the sting of alcohol on chapped hands.

There was the part of Jim that he didn’t talk about, the empty space where a figure should have been. That was the part of him that he’d tried to forget in Iowa, tried to leave behind and tear out of himself.

Then there was the part of Jim who sat on the roof, letting the wind rustle his hair and listening to the trains rumble by overhead. That was the part of Jim that was just  _ him _ . No one tried to give that Jim their pity. He didn’t need it, didn’t need the stares that told him that there was something wrong with him.

It was the wind that really spelled the end to his little secret sanctum. He had been sitting in his accustomed spot, sheltered from the wind by the chimneys that rose like a growth from the flat top of the roof. Well, normally it would have been sheltered, but summer was coming and the winds had shifted so that they were blowing right past him.

He’d nearly been knocked off the roof when he had climbed over the lip, wind catching his hair and shifting his center of gravity. Jim had felt the panic settle in the pit of his stomach as his foot had slipped backward—

He hadn’t fallen, of course, but his hands were still shaking on the pages of his battered paperback when the wind picked up, which was probably how it was pulled from his hand.

Jim swore and scrambled to the edge of the roof just in time to see The Left Hand of Darkness barely miss a pedestrian.

“What the hell?” came the startled yell from the street, and Jim recognized the voice.

He was frozen to the spot, which was why when Bones looked up he saw Jim peering over the side of the building. Bones’ eyes widened before his signature scowl reasserted itself.

“Jim?” Bones called, lifting the book to shade his eyes from the late afternoon sun, “Are you the one who’s throwing books at me? If you wanted your own room, there’re better ways to do it y’know,” he frowned, and Jim could see it even from four stories up, “and why are you on the roof anyway?”

“Shit, sorry Bones! I wasn’t trying to off you, I swear!” Jim shouted back, wincing. 

The few people nearby were looking concernedly at his roommate, probably wondering why he was shouting at a building. So much for his secret hideaway. “Would you mind bringing that back up?”

“I can’t hear a word you’re saying,” Bones called back and shook his head before unlocking the front door and disappearing into the building.

Jim could imagine him grumbling all the way up the stairs to their room, scaring their other housemates like always. More than once Jim had been forced to apologize when the Russian kid down the hall had been brought close to tears by Bones’ glares. What a kid like that was doing away from home in the first place, Jim wasn’t sure, but he still didn’t want him to be scarred by the southern doctor.

_ And here it was, another part of Jim. The part that apologizes for his roommate before laughing with him about their neighbors. The part that Jim tries to pretend is just an act. But isn’t all of it an act? _

Weighting down the lawn chair and stuffing the cushions into the duffel bag he looped around the legs, Jim swung back into the room just as Bones slammed the door open. He sighed when he saw Jim standing awkwardly in the middle of the room, like he’d been caught at something illegal.

_ Hell, maybe he had. Were there rules about being on roofs in cities? No, _ Jim brushed the thought away. That was ridiculous, he may have been a country boy, but he was pretty sure they couldn’t stop him from being on the roof. It  _ was  _ his house after all, in a sense.

“I’m not even gonna ask what you were doing up there,” Bones sighed, thrusting the book back towards Jim who grabbed it eagerly and flipped through to dog-ear the page he had been on before the wind had so rudely interrupted him, “but when you fall, don’t expect me to scrape you off the sidewalk.”

“There’s that charm. You’re just, a great guy Bones, you know that right?” Jim smirked.

Oh, how he loved to prod his roommate. Watching each new expression make its way across Bones’ face was like watching storm clouds brewing and blowing away.

“That’s still— whatever. I’m going to take a shower and then I’m gonna sleep for about three days,” he pointed an accusing finger at Jim, “and if you so much as sneeze you’ll have to get that hobgoblin professor of yours to clean you off the goddamn  _ walls _ .”

Jim gasped, looking scandalized, “Who, me? Bothering you while you sleep? No sir, not me. I’m the best roommate you could ask for, quiet as a mouse, I won’t say a word—”

“You can start now,” Bones snorted before stripping to his boxers and grumbling all the way into their bathroom.

Jim did  _ not _ stare at his ass. Or his abs. Or his arms.

_ But damn, he had really great arms. _

What Jim  _ did  _ do was gingerly flick the abandoned clothes into the basket of dirty laundry that had been accumulating in the corner since neither of them could be bothered to actually get around to washing them by hand, and Jim didn’t exactly have the spare change for a laundromat. He’d probably have to find some soon though, since he was down to his last couple of shirts and he couldn’t exactly re-wear anything that had already made its way to the pile. McCoy was always rank after a long shift at the hospital, but Jim couldn’t complain; he knew that he was just as bad after a night of bartending.

At least they both had irregular hours. Jim was sure that, were he rooming with anyone else, they would have dumped his ass after the first time he stumbled in at two in the morning, smelling of cheap booze and all too sober. Hell, Bones was the one who would come crying to Jim, actually as drunk as he smelled, after a particularly rough day. Those were usually the days when there had been an accident on TV, and Jim would sit with McCoy until the shaking stopped and they could both go back to bed. They were a good match that way.

When Bones eventually emerged from the shower, Jim was lying on his narrow bed, the light from the setting sun lighting his hair on fire and making the pages of his book glow. He looked good, and he knew it too. Jim was the first to admit to capitalizing on his good looks; They were what brought in the tips at the bar.

Bones barely spared him a glance before he started getting dressed. Jim steadfastly stared at the page he was working on, trying his best to focus on imagined weather conditions, and told himself he was not disappointed. He had gotten to the good part of the book, and he’d finally been sucked back in when his focus was interrupted by Bones.

“I didn’t know you read sci-fi.”

Jim coughed out a laugh, catching Bones’ eye from across the room, “What were you expecting? I’m not exactly a romance kind of guy.” Not a lie, even if most of his experience with the genre came from books picked up for a dollar at a train station in the middle of nowhere.

Bones glared at him, “If someone had asked me what books you read, I’d have probably told them you were illiterate.”

“Aww come on Bonesy. You’ve seen my bookshelf,” Jim gestured towards the offending shelf in question.

It sagged in the middle, and the spines of most of the books were faded and cracked, pages barely held together by cheap glue. They were one of the few things he’d brought with him from home, the one thing he couldn’t bear to part with. Most of the books were old, older than him—they had to be, considering most had been his father’s. He’d only really bought a handful, and most of those  _ had _ in fact been sci-fi. Or classics. Two ends of the same spectrum, honestly. Jim didn’t really have the cash to spare on his growing collection, but you had to enjoy the little things in life sometimes.

“Besides, this is Le Guin! Everyone has to read her stuff at some point,” he sat up and looked at his roommate in mock surprise when he didn’t answer, “wait, don’t tell me you’ve never read Earthsea? The dispossessed? Not even this?” He waved the book he held, which only made Bones scowl deeper.

“My wife was the one who read in our family,” Bones sighed, “And she really only read those…”

“Train station novels?” Jim guessed, “Honestly, if that’s all the exposure you had, I can’t really blame you for not wanting to read. And you called  _ me _ illiterate.” He snorted.

“Whatever. Not like I really need it anyway. Now are you going to shut up so I can sleep? Damned kids these days have too much—”

Bones’ last complaint was cut off as the book landed on his stomach, and he glared at Jim. “What the hell? How many times are you going to throw shit at me today?”

“My shift’s starting soon, and not reading The Left Hand is basically a crime against humanity,” Jim smirked as he got up and started pulling on the black collared shirt he usually wore on weekends. The one that contrasted nicely with his hair, “I’m sure even Dr ‘I’ve never read a book in my life because I was scarred from my last marriage’ McCoy can manage a couple hundred pages. Maybe you can fill up all that down-time at the hospital. Besides, it’s barely six. You can’t go to sleep yet, even if you are just a grumpy old man.”

Bones grumbled and rolled to face the wall, but he didn’t throw the book back at him, which Jim considered a win. Jim tugged his leather Jacket on over his grin to combat the evening chill creeping under the window and jangled his keys loudly just to hear Bones grumble as he locked the door behind him. He passed the Russian kid on his way down, who looked almost ready to have a fit when Jim smiled at him. 

Jim walked into the night, the sun a faint red glow on the horizon, and tried to tell himself that he had no hidden motives in lending Bones the book.

_ Just sharing literature with the unlearned,  _ He thought, and laughed towards the sky. He’d have to find a new book to read on the roof, but that was okay. He always had more. 


End file.
